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Lobbyists

From October 2014 to the Iowa Caucuses and New Hampshire Primary 16 months later, AFSC trained more than 1200 people to talk with the presidential candidatesquestions about the excessive influence of Pentagon contractors, the for-profit prison industry, and a corrupt system that enables powerful corporations to drive American policy toward their own interests. Together, we asked the candidates more than 400 questions and documented many of them on this website. These "bird dogging" efforts, combined with the use of our giant banners and other educational activities, helped turn the political discourse toward urgent issues that might have otherwise been ignored.

Within a few hours before the Iowa Caucus, we talked with three candidates in Des Moines. Martin O’Malley called for openness, transparency and accountability in the Defense Department. Rick Santorum learned more about the immigrant detention quota and for-profit prisons. Jeb Bush wants to modernize the nuclear triad with an aspiration of reducing nuclear armaments.

I asked Ted Cruz what specific steps he would take to prevent corporate cronyism under his administration. While he applauded my question, he did not provide any particular strategies to reduce corruption.

After identifying herself as an Iraq war veteran, Kelly Dougherty asked Rand Paul about the role of private military contractors that profit from war and use their profits to lobby for more contracts. "Anybody who gets money from government in the form of a contract should be limited in what they can do to lobby to get more of our money," said Paul. "It would say in the contract, 'I agree not to lobby and give contributions to legislators.' I think you could limit special interests by contract, voluntary contract, when they do business with government."

"There is an incentive to keep those prisons going. It's one of the fastest growing businesses we have," said Dr. Ben Carson on private prisons lobbying millions of dollars to incarcerate more people on Sunday Jan. 25th in Ames, Iowa. He continued by saying we need to change rules for mandatory incarceration rules and non-violent offenders.